Cantrips

Cantrips are minor spells that live outside any guild's curriculum. Most are small, useful, or charming things — floating letters, return home, parlour tricks. A few are surprisingly powerful, but those are rare and well kept.

How they differ from regular spells

Regular spells are taught in guild rooms by guild trainers. Cantrips are taught by individual people. The cantrip teacher might be a hermit in the woods, an old woman in a village, a half-mad scholar in some forgotten library — or anyone in between. There is no central list. You find them by talking to people and asking what they know.

The simple cantrips have many teachers. The dangerous and useful ones have few, and those few don't always advertise.

Studying a cantrip

Once you've found a teacher and a cantrip you want:

study <cantrip> from <teacher>

Most people can learn most cantrips. A teacher may still turn you away: individual cantrips can require a race, a gender, a worshipped element, an alignment, a guild or a level before anyone will teach them, and the teacher tells you which one you are missing. The experience cost climbs the more of a cantrip you already know, so the first steps are the cheap ones.

You can't read a cantrip's full help text until you've learned at least a little of it. Before that, ask the teacher about it — most will give a hint about what the cantrip does, so you can decide if it's worth your time and money.

Finding teachers

Try talking to NPCs you encounter, especially the unusual ones. ask <person> about cantrip or ask <person> about teaching is a good opening. Players who have learned rare cantrips sometimes share where they found their teachers, but don't expect the secret ones to be handed out.

See also

• Magic — regular spellcasting
• Talents — other learnable abilities
• Skills and spells